How Mets' Brandon Nimmo is Adjusting to Playing Through Wrist Injury
LOS ANGELES - After sitting out four games to rest his sprained wrist on the New York Mets' previous home stand, centerfielder Brandon Nimmo has struggled to find his footing at the plate since re-entering the lineup.
But on Saturday night against the Dodgers, Nimmo broke out of an 0-for-13 slump with two hits and was on base a total of three times with two runs scored. He credits this bounce-back performance to the previous game, where he figured out a path to swinging pain free.
"I’ve kind of had to try to find out the last three games what I can tolerate at game speed," Nimmo told Inside the Mets in the Dodgers' visiting dugout on Saturday. "(On Friday) I found out a way - and just from the (cortisone) shot working and everything - to play without the pain to be able to take my normal swings."
Nimmo had a swing-and-miss that normally bothered his wrist, but it didn’t leave him in pain on Friday.
“That was a big confidence builder, which was the important part for me," Nimmo said.
This discovery allowed the 29-year-old to be able to focus on his plan at the plate in his final two at-bats of the Mets’ 6-1 loss to the Dodgers on Friday night, as opposed to worrying about experiencing pain while swinging the bat.
“That part for me was the big obstacle to overcome, so I’m expecting better things moving forward," he said.
And so far, better things have come. According to Nimmo, the Mets' training staff found a treatment path that is working well, and he does not envision having to receive another cortisone shot.
“It’ll continue to heal and get back to 100% in the coming weeks, but for now I feel good about where we are at moving forward," Nimmo said.
Although his wrist ailment was minor at first, it worsened over the course of playing through it for around three weeks. It got to the point where he was experiencing pain when swinging and missing or fouling off pitches, and that's what led to the decision to rest him for four days and give him a cortisone shot.
“It wasn’t something that wasn’t quite recovering when I got back in the box," he said.
“For some reason when I make contact it provides a little bit of that deceleration, where it doesn’t hurt as bad.”
Nimmo is just 5 for his last 28, dropping his numbers on the season to .277/.371/.422 with a .793 OPS, which is still more than respectable. He has been fighting through a wrist injury, but thinks he has cracked the code on how to swing pain free.
The Mets’ offense scratched across just one run across their first two games with the Dodgers, resulting in back-to-back losses. And while it didn't get any easier as they had to face Los Angeles’ ace Walker Buehler on Saturday evening, their bats woke up for nine runs. They tagged Buehler for five runs and chased him after 2 1/3 innings, the shortest outing of his career.
“It’s baseball,” Nimmo said, “you go through ups-and-downs and we knew that at some point during the season the offense might struggle some. We have enough veteran guys around here who understand that.
“Nobody’s panicking; nobody’s getting too riled up about not producing right now. You try and work and get out of it as fast as you can by coming up with solutions, but It’s going to happen in 162 games.”
“We are fortunate that we have a very good team and a very veteran team, where I think we can bounce out of these things quicker than usual.”
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